I went rather beyond the terse mandate of Tea With Chris on Friday. So I thought I would be brief today.

Above is the hottest, cleanest vein-infusion of joy that I’ve had in a while, Superchunk’s TV appearance this week, with John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats playing the role of a (much more sober) Bez-style hypeman, and a throng of the ‘Chunk’s NYC friends’n’family serving as boogie-woogie peanut gallery.

The contrast with the self-conscious appearance of Pavement (whom I also love, don’t get me wrong) on the Colbert Report this week couldn’t be stronger: Superchunk represent the anti-slacker version of 90s “indie” culture; though they sort of popularized the term post-Bob Dobbs/pre-Linklater, it was actually in the inverse: “I’m working/ But I’m not working for you/ Slack motherfucker.” That was the harder-beating heart of the ethos, even if it didn’t turn out to be “the winning side of history.” (Pavement’s musical influence is overrated and Superchunk’s underrated, for one; for another, with Superchunk you don’t actually need quote marks around indie.)

But forget subkultchura beancounting. Back to the world: First, consider, here’s an art project whose two central figures were able to break up their intimate relationship without breaking up the project (or a related one, their record label), and who have come back after a long hiatus with a record of new songs rather than just a rehash, a task at which most of their “bigger” contemporaries have failed. (And yeah, a lot of the new album Majesty Shredding is actually this good, as you can hear on the Merge website.)

It’s a matter of tint and shade, of angles and apertures, but for Superchunk, so-called Gen X “irony” was the freightage of open-eyed realism, not preemptive defeatism. Their music always said the necessity of taking a tragic view of life can be countered with enough palliatives – jokes, rhythm, shouting, friendship, travel, velocity, did I mention jokes? – that it’s a damn fair facsimile of an antidote. (“Welcome to art class, and yes it does involve shaking your ass.”) They insist that bliss is not ignorance. Exhale. Repeat.